23 Jun 2012

The beginnings of the long-awaited Facebook ad network could be here. Facebook ads began running on Zynga.com today.

First reported by Inside Facebook
today, Facebook display ad units including Sponsored Stories are now
being served on Zynga.com, the casual games site from the company behind
popular Facebook gaming apps like Farmville.

"People may now see
ads and sponsored stories from Facebook on Zynga.com," confirmed a
Facebook spokesperson in an email sent to ClickZ. "We don't share any
information about people or advertisers with Zynga and advertisers do
not have any new targeting criteria."
In other words, this is not
really the ad network ad industry watchers have expected Facebook to
launch in conjunction with its Open Graph. Many anticipate a robust ad
network that will allow advertisers to target ads across the web based
on behavioral and contextual data gleaned through Facebook share
buttons, and data collected through interactions on Facebook itself.

Whether or not that will ever come, in the nearer future observers
can probably expect to see Facebook ads running on other sites that
allow people to sign in using Facebook.
Facebook also piqued
interest in its alleged ad network ambitions when news of partnerships
with several DSPs broke last week. Facebook plans to open its site up to
a large pool of data for display ad targeting, allowing advertisers to
target users based on data from the DSP partners.
Advertisers will target people through the DSP partners, and if
Facebook finds a cookie match, an ad will be served on Facebook.
However, they can't combine native Facebook data with that outside data,
which would be sure to ruffle feathers among privacy advocates.